, 1887-07-21
CHEAP RESTAURANTS.
THE ART OF PRODUCING SEVERAL
DISHES FROM THE SAME SOURCE.

A Countless Variety on the Bill of Fare.
Soups from tie Stock BarreI-FIsh
Flesh and FowI-PIe. Pudding, Coffee,
Wine.
If you will look over a bill of fare in
any cheap eating house you will see four
OF nVe Kinds of soups, three or four kinds
OF nsh, a half dozen sorts of roast meats,
game and poultry, made dishes and en-
trees. No doubt you nave noticed that
and wondered how under the sun a kitchen
with a range big enough to cook and keep
warm all these dishes can possibly find
space in less than half an acre. Yet IL
you should order every dish on the list
you could get 1t, or something that would
answer for it, and the kitchen where all
these ~gastronomic wonders are turned out
Is not as big as the kitchen in the average
private house, either. Most wonderful of
all, for all the countless variety of dishes
on the bill of fare there are not more than
n dozen dishes in the kitchen.
You see, 1T is all in the carving and the
dlshlng. Here is a big boiler of clear
soup. 1t is made-never mind how. You
draw a big bowl out of it and from a big
pitcher by its side you pour in q little
thlckenlng, give it a stir and there's your
consomme. Into the next bowl you fork
a lot of boiled macaroni, and there's your
macaronf soup. The mex order is for veg
etable soup. You pitch in a lot of boiled
vegetables, and there you are. BY having
a few other ingredients handy you can get
muigatawney, OK tail, chicken, tomato or
rice soup out of that same big boiler filed
from the stock barrel. How's that for
modern necromancy?
FISH, FLESH AND FOWL.
Well, the next thing on the bill OF fire
is fish. There are two kinds, baked and
boiled. The first slice you cut off is boiled
cod, the next is paddock, the next is halibut.
the next is blue fish. In the next pan is a
baked fish. 1t has all the various capabili-
ties possessed by its broiled brother. When
the two fish swan in the sea they were
good, plain cod. With the aid of a little
sauce they can be almost anything in a
restaurant.
Here is a piece of roast mutton and
there a piece of roast beef. 1t is no trick
at all to transform them, with the carving
knife deftly welded, into roast lamb, roast
rib or roast joint. With a little delicate
treatment it can become roast venison,
roast bear or any other roasts on that
wonderful bill of fare. One cut off that
fowl there is roast chicken, the next is
roast turkey. Slcing the dark meat care
fully makes it pheasant. Adding fish oil
after the operation and throwing on plenty
of Jelly makes it duck. The veal becomes
rabbit, stewed chicken, lamb pie, or good
honest veal, just as you please.
When the soul is thickened a good deal
and rice curry powder is thrown in YOU
have Il very good curry. When it is thick
ened n little and stewed kidneys are added
YOU have the ever popular kidney stew.
The addition of pieces fished out of the
bottom of the boiler with a sort of oyster
tongs will make almost any kim of stew
of it.
You can always bet on the hash, how
ever.
There is not much room for deception,
either, in that browning a~trocity of Amer
lean cookery, the pie, but when you get to
puddings the father of lies lets himself
loose. Bermuda pudding, New York
pudding, plum pudding are all sliced off
the same loaf. The hot pudding of today
becomes the fruit cake cold of tomorrow.
hi boiled rice of the vegetable table Is
made into rice pudding in a jify with
some milk and a little nutmeg TIL tap
ioca, age and manico buildings all come
out of the same dish. There is no differ
ence that the most expert can discover be-
tween cottage buildings and buildings of
half u dozen other fancy M
COFFEE AND
The French coffee at twenty-five cents a
pot with which you help down your repast
is drawn from the very same urn as the
ordinary every day coffee that your poorer
neighbor at the lunch counter drinks at
five cents per cup. And last of all, the
fine imported Madeira with which you
wash it all down, comes from the same
raisin water and salicylic acid foundry as
the sound, unloaded Medoc.
There are two articles of diet which the
American caterer has not yet been able to
counterfeit. One is a baked potato and
the other a boiled egg. However, it is not
at all unlikely that he will, in the near
future, discover some way of turning these
out of the same dish from which he dips
his cranberry sauce or bacon.
All this without going into any mention
of the actual authorizations, such as sugar
made of glucose, jellies made of apple par
ings and old rags, alum in the bread, acid
in the vinegar cruet, brown sugar and
water for maple sugar. The true artist
recks not of these. They are the inven-
lions of sordid minded impostors. He him
self is a wizard who makes, by the sheer
force of his art, a great many desirable
things out of one or two.-New York Com